towards sustainable development that leaves no one behind pape… · towards sustainable...

Towards Sustainable Development that Leaves No One Behind The Challenge of the Post-2015 Agenda

International Movement ATD Fourth World

Editors: Brendan Coyne, Xavier Godinot, Quyen Tran, Thierry Viard With the contribution of: Isabelle Perrin, Jacqueline Plaisir, Diana Skelton, Jean Toussaint and Janet Nelson Cover page photos: Top of page Manila, Philippines Bottom left Brussels, Belgium Bottom center Tanghin, near Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso Bottom right Honduras



Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................... 5

1. ACKNOWLEDGING THE VIOLENCE OF EXTREME POVERTY .......................................................... 6

Extreme poverty is both a cause and a consequence of multiple human rights violations ............... 6

Stigmatization and humiliation increase the persistence of poverty ................................................. 6

People living in poverty have a history of persecution and exploitation ........................................... 7

Enforces silences perpetuate poor planning and poor governance ................................................... 7

Extreme poverty represents an unacceptable waste of human resources ........................................ 7

2. THINKING TOGETHER WITH PEOPLE LIVING IN EXTREME POVERTY ............................................ 8

Obstacles to overcome ....................................................................................................................... 8

Moving towards properly participatory research projects ................................................................. 8

3. INSIGHTS FROM THE GLOBAL DIALOGUE ON THE POST 2015 AGENDA ....................................... 9

The MDGs have not reached the poorest populations ....................................................................... 9

Misleading illusions of global data and statistics ................................................................................ 9

Growth that ignores the linkage between inequality, poverty and climate justice ......................... 10

A new model should align development targets with human rights norms and standards ............. 11

4. DEVELOPMENT WITH PEOPLE LIVING IN POVERTY, NOT AGAINST THEM.................................. 11

Development against people living in poverty ................................................................................. 11

Haiti: when international aid silences the poor ................................................................................ 11

Unemployment, informal work and junk jobs .................................................................................. 12

Healthcare and social protections systems ...................................................................................... 13

Housing and Sanitation ..................................................................................................................... 14

5. EDUCATION AND TRAINING FOR ALL BASED ON COOPERATION AMOUNG PUPILS, TEACHERS,

PARENTS AND COMMUNITIES .................................................................................................... 14

Mixed results on education-related targets ..................................................................................... 14

Education from the perspective of people living in extreme poverty .............................................. 15

Key issues and challenges highlighted by action-research programme ........................................... 16



Table of Contents (continued)

6. ADDRESSING DISCRIMINATION AND FOSTERING PARNERSHIP WITH PEOPLE LIVING

IN POVERTY ............................................................................................................................... 17

Stigmatization ................................................................................................................................... 17

Discrimination ................................................................................................................................... 17

Barriers to participation .................................................................................................................... 18

Good practices .................................................................................................................................. 18

7. CONCLUSION: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE POST-2015 AGENDA ......................................... 19

Leave no one behind ......................................................................................................................... 20

Introduce people living in poverty as a new partner in building knowledge on development ........ 21

Promote decent jobs, social protection and meeting the essential needs of all .............................. 22

Achieve Education and Training for All based on cooperation between stakeholders .................... 23

Promote participatory good governance .......................................................................................... 24



Introduction

To feed into the evaluation process for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) coordinated by the United Nations, ATD Fourth World has launched its own participatory research project to assess the MDGs*. The aim is to ensure that people living in extreme poverty can contribute their knowledge and experience to the development agenda. Twelve of the countries in which ATD Fourth World has an active presence are involved in the project: Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, France, Haiti, Guatemala, Madagascar, Mauritius, the Philippines, Peru and Poland. They reflect a geographical, economic and cultural diversity; and the inclusion of 'developed' countries, like Belgium, France and Poland, emphasises the fact that chronic poverty exists around the world, not only in those countries targeted by the MDGs. “Even in extreme poverty, a person has ideas. If these ideas aren't recognized, people fall even deeper into poverty” (participant in the Ouagadougou MDG seminar). To understand the successes and failures of the current MDG agenda, it is essential to think together with people living in extreme poverty. This is both a matter of efficiency and a moral duty, since participation in public affairs is a fundamental human right. People living in extreme poverty see the day-to-day problems that arise from the current way development policies are designed and applied, and they have ideas on how these problems could be fixed. In each of the twelve chosen countries, ATD Fourth World teams have set up, with people living in poverty and extreme poverty, meetings grounded on the mutual trust built up over the years. The participants have met and discussed development issues through weekly or monthly meetings, carrying out interviews, learning how to voice their concerns and building a collective knowledge, over periods spanning from six to twenty-four months. Depending on the countries, representatives of academia, NGOs, trade unions, civil servants from different ministries (education, social affairs, employment, professional training, etc.), and officials from international bodies such as the European Union, UNICEF, UNESCO, UNDP, OHCHR and the World Bank have met and prepared themselves for a dialogue with people living in extreme poverty - a dialogue requiring tactfulness, openness and humility. These different groups have been brought together in national and international seminars that took place in Mauritius, Bolivia, Belgium, France, Madagascar and Burkina Faso. Around two thousand people, a majority of whom are living in poverty or in extreme poverty, contributed to the process. Each of the seminars aimed to produce an analysis of specific issues related to the MDGs, and a set of common recommendations for the post-2015 agenda. They are summed up in this working paper and will be brought to the synthesis seminar in New York, on June 26 and 27, 2013. They will be discussed and refined with relevant United Nations agencies and with ATD Fourth World’s other main partners such as ITUC, Social Watch, and others in the Beyond 2015 Campaign.

* With partial funding from the Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation for the Progress of Humankind



1. ACKNOWLEDGING THE VIOLENCE OF EXTREME POVERTY

In 2012, ATD Fourth World ran a research project entitled Extreme Poverty is Violence, Breaking the Silence, Searching for Peace.1 The project's findings had important implications for development and anti-poverty programmes, and are outlined below. Extreme poverty is both a cause and a consequence of multiple human rights violations. The Poverty is Violence project revealed the scale of human rights violations experienced by people living in extreme poverty, as described in this excerpt from its executive summary: “The true dimensions of extreme poverty have been trivialized, often being described solely in terms of a lack of food, income, housing and knowledge. When placing oneself in a position of understanding and learning from the victims of such conditions, another reality emerges: acts of violence carried out in tandem with the denial of fundamental rights. Material deprivation reduces people to mere survival; insecurity causes families to break up; exploitation robs people of their potential; humiliation, exclusion and contempt reach a point at which people living in extreme poverty are not recognized as human beings.” Stigmatization and humiliation increase the persistence of poverty. The stigmatization of impoverished groups and individuals ends up increasing the intensity and persistence of poverty. People are denied access to fundamental human rights, resources, and a dignified life either through active discrimination or careless neglect. There is a vital need to guard against these processes in anti-poverty programmes and in the framing of future development objectives. As one French participant outlined: “That people disrespect us by calling us names like 'social case', 'bad mother', 'incapable', 'good-for-nothing' demonstrates how they are judging us and do not know the reality we face. We experience the violence of being discriminated against, of not existing, not being part of the same world, not being treated like other human beings.” As the recent ESCR-DfID funded research paper Poverty in Global Perspective: Is Shame a Common Denominator?2 suggests, the linking of shame to poverty and the imposition of shame on impoverished populations occurs in both developed and developing countries. It provokes a vicious circle, where people are blamed for their condition, pushed further into poverty, and blamed once again. One Peruvian participant described the pain this process causes: “The worst thing about living in extreme poverty is the contempt - that they treat you like you are worthless, that they look at you with disgust and fear and that they even treat you like an enemy. We and our children experience this every day, and it hurts us, humiliates us and makes us live in fear and shame.”



People living in poverty have a history of persecution and exploitation. Impoverished individuals and communities face targeted persecution and exploitation from more powerful members of society. This often occurs with the complicity of the state, in both developed and developing countries. Throughout history, people living in extreme poverty have been deported, institutionalized, incarcerated, forcibly removed from their families, sterilized and, in times of dearth, left to starve. For example, from the 1600s to the1960s, the British Government deported more than 150 000 poor and orphaned children to North America and Australia. In another shocking example in living memory, the Swedish state imposed compulsory sterilization on women it classed as “inferior” or “antisocial”. This persecution is accompanied by a parallel tendency to exploit the most marginalized for financial or material gain. One case in point is 20th Century Ireland, where over 10 000 'socially dysfunctional' women were incarcerated in 'Magdalene Laundries'. Whilst many governments have acknowledged the “sheer barbarity” of such behaviour, some States still pursue policies that bear an eerie similarity to past persecutions of their most impoverished communities, for example by endorsing sterilizations backed by cash incentives as an anti-poverty policy, in spite of the long shadows cast over this method by the past forced sterilizations. The persecution and exploitation of people living in extreme poverty and social exclusion is a historical and on-going breach of human rights, which perpetuates poverty and hinders development. Enforced silences perpetuate poor planning and poor governance. During the Poverty is Violence project, it also became clear that when a person is trapped in extreme poverty, they feel unable to use accountability or complaints mechanisms, condemning them to silence. Participants attributed this to feelings of powerlessness and guilt about their condition, fear of retaliation, and loss of hope for the future. The legal and social professionals involved in the project also addressed the topic of their silence. They concluded that when those not living in poverty remain silent about the rights abuses, the stigmatization and poor planning they witness, they themselves become complicit in perpetuating the situation. If anti-poverty and development strategies are to be successful, both of these destructive forms of silence must be broken. Governments have only apologized for the sheer barbarity of past actions because the people who had endured injustice at the hands of the state broke the silence about the way they were treated. If they had not, it is unlikely any apology would have been given. Even though they knew they risked hostility and contempt, people felt they had to speak out so that these forms of violence would not be repeated. Extreme poverty represents an unacceptable waste of human resources. Extreme poverty kills every day. Many of the deaths caused by hunger and malnutrition are not due to food shortages, but are the consequence of poverty and extreme poverty preventing people from



accessing supplies. Extreme poverty is also at the root of many deaths caused by easily preventable illnesses, unsafe working practices and insanitary living conditions. It is equally linked to deaths caused by criminal violence and overaggressive policing when people are trapped in extremely dangerous sites, unable to relocate to safer areas because of financial constraints. The unnecessary deaths caused by extreme poverty are an unacceptable breach of human rights. They too often go unaccounted for in current evaluation models. The violence of extreme poverty constitutes a massive waste of human resources and potential, causing people to be jettisoned by the societies that exploit, stigmatize, discriminate against and ultimately abandon them. Any future development framework that wishes to be sustainable must address this huge waste of human resources and potential. In fact, working and thinking in true partnership with people living in poverty can produce a new knowledge that is relevant to understanding and changing society by breaking the cycles of distrust, ignorance and exclusion.

2. THINKING TOGETHER WITH PEOPLE LIVING IN EXTREME POVERTY Overcoming and understanding the violence of extreme poverty, and its impact on development, requires overcoming some obstacles and setting up specific participatory research projects. Obstacles to overcome During the Madagascar seminar in February 2013, participants from a background of extreme poverty gave a vivid description of some of the obstacles that hinder their participation: “People living in extreme poverty feel that they are rejected by mainstream society. They endure a lack of food. They are afraid to enter offices since they wear unclean clothes. They dare not enter health centres and so carry illnesses that end in death. They lack financial resources and spend their time looking for money. Extreme poverty brings about fear, shame, and the fear of not being able to express what you mean.” Yet, individuals and communities that experience extreme poverty and social exclusion have first-hand knowledge of the effects these phenomena have on the ground, as well as the motors that drive them and the barriers that maintain them. To discuss with partners on an even playing field, they first need to be able to build self-confidence and trust. They need time to develop an understanding of their situation and to construct a sense of agency that counteracts the stigmatization and isolation of extreme poverty. Moving towards properly participatory research projects People living in extreme poverty cannot simply be inserted into standard research projects and expected to share their knowledge. Instead, a genuinely participatory research project must meet several conditions to ensure a fair and non-exploitative dialogue:



Those in a position of power within the project must be aware that policies and programmes often fail to reach the most impoverished communities, and be willing to change the social, economic, and cultural realities that perpetuate extreme poverty and exclusion.

People living in poverty must be recognized as possessing a unique knowledge. They must not be defined by what they lack or need, but as active members of society who offer a valuable insight gained from life experience.

People living in poverty must not be isolated within the project. They must have secure links to others living in similar circumstances, and space and time to discuss and reflect as a group.

Each person must feel that they are an equal participant within the project and be able to play an active role in all aspects of it.

To avoid people feeling used as part of a tokenistic exercise, the project has to build personal skills, add meaning to people's lives, strengthen existing relationships within the community as well as build new relationships within and outside of the community.

The project must be transparent and accountable to participants. Participants have to receive feedback about the outcomes. Information should include how participants’ words are being used and the impact of participants’ statements.

Any reports or other outputs that will be produced should be shared with participants – or preferably be co-produced with them.

The above conditions are based on the Merging of Knowledge methodology.3 Correctly implemented, they provide new understanding of how people experience extreme poverty.

3. INSIGHTS FROM THE GLOBAL DIALOGUE ON THE POST-2015 AGENDA The MDGs have not reached the poorest populations. While acknowledging the benefit of a framework with time-bound targets to measure actions undertaken on key development issues, the achievements of the MDGs have not benefited equally all people living in poverty, and those experiencing the greatest hardships have been left behind. For instance, in Bangladesh where micro-finance has typically been showcased, non-government organizations have seen that nearly 20% of the people targeted did not actually benefit from such development programmes.4 The High-Level Panel (HLP) of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda in fact observed that the MDGs “did not focus enough on reaching the very poorest and most excluded people. They were silent on the devastating effects of conflict and violence on development.”5 Misleading illusions of global data and statistics The 2012 MDG report published by the UN stated that “the world has met the MDG drinking water target, five years ahead of schedule”- 783 million people were deemed to remain “without access to an



improved drinking water source.” In May 2013, the World Health Organization published a new report which raised to 2.4 billion the official number of people without access to drinking water, explaining that “improved drinking water sources” - defined in the UN report as sources that are not shared with animals – do not always provide safe drinking water. The difference with the 2012 estimate is 306%. Target D of MDG 7 aims at “achieving a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020.” It was formulated in 2000 on the basis of the estimated figure of 100 million people living in slums worldwide, which turned out to be considerably underestimated. In 2012, the MDG report by UN stated that 760 million people lived in slums in 2000 – a 760% difference. Measuring extreme poverty by the $1.25 per-day threshold is simplistic and misleading. The indicator has rendered extreme poverty in developed countries invisible. It has not been eradicated and has worsened after the 2009 economic and financial crisis. “One of the weaknesses of the MDG framework has been its blindness to the issue of inequality and to the most marginalized members of societies. Its focus on aggregate figures and overall progress failed to account for growing social and economic disparities and incentivized States to prioritize aggregate progress and the ‘low-hanging fruit’ rather than giving special attention to the most vulnerable groups.”6 Growth that ignores the linkage between inequality, poverty, and climate justice In its discussion forum 'From unrelenting growth to purposeful development,” the Inter-Parliamentary Union meeting in Quito, Ecuador (22 –27 March 2013), affirmed that “Growth alone is not the answer to the social, economic and environmental challenges of our time. (…) A different approach that focuses on well-being in all its dimensions is required if we are to evolve as a global community able to fulfill core human values of peace, solidarity, and harmony with nature. (…) The perennial cycle of increasing consumption and production that is at the heart of the current economic model is no longer sustainable.” According to Philippe Maystadt,7 “we need a global approach that changes the way of economic growth. (…) The financialization, which has been happening for twenty years now, has a real influence on the increase of inequalities and of poverty. Instead of being servant of the economy, finance has become very dominant in our globalized economy. The European 2020 strategy aiming at intelligent growth needs completing by better regulating finance and by matching certain aspects of the tax system.” Meanwhile, ILO Director-General Guy Ryder has warned that current policies to address the global crisis are failing to stop rising unemployment in advanced economies and stalling growth in emerging and developing countries.8 The HLP report recognizes that “the MDGs fell short by not integrating the economic, social, and environmental aspects of sustainable development. (…) The result was that environment and development were never properly brought together.” People and families in extreme poverty have already experienced the devastating consequences of a polluted environment and lack of clean water and sanitation, as they usually live in places prone to floods, landslides, and other natural disasters or work in extremely precarious conditions.



A new model should align development targets with human rights norms and standards Such a development agenda would design cross-cutting goals, aiming to progressively eliminate disparities within the most marginalized groups and between them and the general population, as well as between countries in order to achieve more inclusive forms of development. The Guiding Principles on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights9 are very relevant in this regard. They provide global policy guidelines that can help policy-makers ensure that public policies, including poverty eradication efforts, reach the poorest members of society, respect and uphold their rights, and take into account the significant social, cultural, economic and structural obstacles to human rights enjoyment. They also spell out the main obstacles to the enjoyment of the rights that are the most important to people living in extreme poverty (such as physical integrity, access to justice, an adequate standard of living, adequate food and nutrition, water, housing, health, work, education and social security) and the specific actions that should be taken to overcome those obstacles.

4. DEVELOPMENT WITH PEOPLE LIVING IN POVERTY, NOT AGAINST THEM “In the Philippines, many of the projects aimed at development end up displacing thousands of families. These projects aim to rehabilitate railways, waterways or develop a business, a shopping centre or something else. But their primary goal is never the well-being or the better being of the affected people. This is what has to change at first.” (Philippine delegation at the Brussels seminar) Development against people living in poverty Throughout the seminars, participants gave concrete examples of development programmes that harm people living in poverty. “We are being demolished,” said delegates from the Philippines, whose informal settlements are demolished by local authorities several times a week. With no other place to live, they must constantly rebuild their shacks. Much the same occurs in Madagascar. In countries such as Spain, families are evicted from their flats because they cannot pay the rent. “They evict us in order to plant trees,” explained participants from Guatemala. Compelled to find alternative solutions, they seek shelter in shanty towns that are destroyed because they are illegal. They are effectively criminalized because of extreme poverty. Haiti: when international aid silences the poor On 12 January 2010 the Haitian earthquake killed 230,000 people and left 1.5 million homeless. When this participatory research project began in early 2012, some participants were still living in tented camps erected the day after the catastrophe. The international aid promised after the earthquake aroused enormous hope in the country, leaving people bitterly disillusioned two years later. In the reconstruction



process, which started very slowly, the government and local communities were bypassed by foreign donors, who thought they could avoid the risk of corruption by reconstructing Haiti without the experience and knowledge of its inhabitants. The result was a huge failure, which has left the country unreconstructed and relying on its own strength.

“Sometimes, we get up and we have nothing to give to eat to the children. My husband goes out to look for work. In November, a builder gave him work for three days. Since then, nothing. Sometimes we go three days without being able to put a pot on the fire because we have nothing to cook. Sometimes I can't wash the clothes because we don't have any soap.” (A mother in Haiti, December 2012).

Unemployment, informal work and junk jobs Unemployment and underemployment plague the lives of people in poverty around the world. In developing countries, many work in insecure informal jobs as waste pickers, street vendors, water carriers, shoe-shiners and labourers. Vulnerable employment, comprising unpaid family workers and self-employed workers, accounted for an estimated 58% of all employment in the developing regions in 2011.10 Informal workers lack adequate social protection and suffer from low pay and poor working conditions. Whether in formal or informal jobs, many are exploited. Their insecurity is increased by the lack of legal identity, as one participant from Burkina Faso described: “Before I had an identity card, I was scared to go into the offices, to enroll my children in school. When I worked as a street vendor, I sold at a low price since I was scared. With my identity card, I'm not scared anymore, I have more confidence.” Though they often enable mere survival, it must be emphasized that the informal jobs created throughout the world by people living in poverty generate a huge amount of wealth that often goes unaccounted for. Some acquire on-the-job professional skills that could be officially recognized if appropriate procedures were put in place. Offered more training and investment opportunities, many self-employed workers could progress toward decent work. “I would like jobs that do not humiliate us,” said a mother from Bolivia. Domestic workers, most often women, may be exploited, insulted, humiliated, and sexually abused. Delegates from Guatemala explained that workers from poor backgrounds often have no contract and their bosses ignore labour laws. In Latin America, many women spoke about their experience of gender violence and how this denied them the autonomy to improve their lives, especially in terms of work and education. In Mauritius, women finishing a professional training scheme argued that “starting a small business was impossible. Help from the government doesn't reach the poorest.” A participant from Poland explained: “When you lose your job, it may cause you to lose your flat, but getting back to work doesn’t guarantee getting out of homelessness. I am an example: I have work, but I’m still homeless.” In Poland, a large part of the workforce are fired and later rehired in a cycle of cheap fixed-term contracts. Workers with these “junk contracts” are usually low-paid, easily replaceable and deprived of social rights.



Some participants testified to good practices that helped improve their working conditions. In La Paz, a representative of the National Federation of Domestic Workers explained how decades of struggle led to the International Convention for domestic workers, adopted by ILO in June 2011, which set up standards for States and employers to comply with. In Madagascar, participants explained how the creation of a handicraft cooperative, with the aim of hiring and training people living in extreme poverty, enabled them to access decent work, changing their lives. Healthcare and social protection systems An estimated 50% of people in the world are without any social protection other than traditional support networks, which are often no longer able to meet their needs. This is one of many obstacles to healthcare access. Women participants in the La Paz seminar told how they were mistreated by healthcare professionals: “They treat us like animals.” Mothers endure insults like “Why did you give birth to so many children like a rabbit?” or “Why didn’t you shower, you pig?” The limited infrastructure and unavailability of medicines reinforces distrust of the public healthcare system. Although healthcare in Bolivia is free for children under five, many from a background of extreme poverty do not use the services available, relying instead on traditional healers, who are cheaper and do not insult or humiliate them. Participants from Belgium said that medicines are too expensive - even though they are reimbursed, the patients must pay for them upfront. In 2010, the Social Barometer of the Health Observatory found that 40% of the poorest households said they had postponed or renounced medical care for financial reasons. Participants described some good practices that enabled them to access healthcare and other human rights. In Haiti, Community Health Officers known as ASCP (Agents de Santé Communautaires Polyvalents) organize group sessions in isolated neighbourhoods to inform people about disease prevention programmes, closely interacting with those most in need. “When you’re an ASCP, you live in the neighbourhood, so you know about the community’s problems. That’s really important. I do house visits twice a month. I walk around the area, looking for families, so I can find out what problems they have.” Cash transfers are a widespread tool for fighting multidimensional poverty, as experienced by millions in Brazil with the Bolsa Familia. Yet Brazilian participants explained that: “It’s an aid, not a solution to our problems. Certainly to have a job would be better than to depend on aid.” Some considered that applying for the Bolsa Familia brings too much humiliation for too little benefit. On the other hand, in Madagascar, people who took part in a participatory unconditional cash transfer programme that involved 150 families living on a public dump over two years noted the following improvements: being able to eat three times a day; being clean and having clean clothes; being able to enroll the children in school; obtaining a birth certificate, “which is the first diploma in your life” and an identity card that made them feel like citizens in their own rights; being able to upgrade their houses from cardboard or plastic to bricks and sheet metal; accessing drinking water; being able to register and pay for health insurance; being able to save for future projects; buying small livestock and learning to raise it; looking for decent work rather than remaining a rubbish picker; being able to fulfil their “traditional obligations.”



Housing and sanitation “There is terrible poverty in my neighbourhood. There is rubbish and refuse everywhere. We lack toilets and people fulfil their needs out in the open. There's lots of contaminated water, and the children bathe in this water. They're often sick: flu, skin infections, diarrhoea” (Haiti participant). It is estimated that 1.1 billion people, 15% of the global population, still have no sanitation facilities at all. Due to rapid urbanization and demographic expansion, the number of slum dwellers, estimated to be 863 million people, is increasing. Participants in the Mauritius seminar stated that “housing is a fundamental right that must be implemented under the state’s responsibility.” But housing alone is insufficient. At present “social housing is often built using low-cost material... Rehousing schemes for poor families relocate families far from everything. They should be integrated into the life of villages and towns.” Participants insisted that “All human rights must be implemented” to enable the general integration of people living in poverty. Participants from Poland said that in their country “there is no offer of cheap housing. Containers are used as social flats.” The amount of affordable housing available for rent is very limited. Some participants claimed to spend 80% of their income on housing and maintenance costs. This expense, combined with insecure working contracts, exposed this group to the risk of homelessness and falling into an irreversible downwards spiral. Participants from Belgium and Mauritius emphasized how bad housing conditions jeopardize family unity: “We risk having our kids taken into care if we live in a hovel.” Discrimination against people living in poverty may be exerted not only by people in a position of authority, but by people in the community. Participants from Mauritius told how established villagers opposed their plans to relocate to nearby unused land after losing their houses. Participants also echoed good practices, like that of eco-slums in Brazil, where NGOs work with slum dwellers in fighting environmental injustice whilst finding innovative solutions for food production, rain water harvesting, agroforestry, sewage treatment, environmental education, and home-made solar water heaters. These improvements were all brought about through collective work using accessible materials and mobilizing community manual labour.

5. EDUCATION AND TRAINING FOR ALL BASED ON COOPERATION AMONG PUPILS, TEACHERS, PARENTS AND COMMUNITIES

Mixed results on education-related targets Achievements related to the MDGs and the Education for All goals set in Dakar, Senegal, in 2000, have shown a mixed picture according to official progress reports. Early childhood care and education (EFA Goal 1) has progressed very slowly, despite its indisputable



importance to early child development and preparation for primary school. More than half the world’s children do not receive pre-primary education because pre-schools cost too much for those who need them the most. According to the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2012 - Youth and skills: Putting education to work11 - the drive to get more children into school is losing momentum, and on current trends, the goal of universal primary education by 2015 (MDG Goal 2 - Target 2A and EFA Goal 2) will be missed. Although enrollment rates for primary school have increased, the quality of education has not improved (EFA goal 6) - of the 650 million children of primary school age, 40 percent fail to obtain minimum learning skills or leave school before reaching grade 4. One fifth of the youth - 200 million young people aged 15 to 24 - do not complete secondary school and lack the skills they need to find work (EFA Goal 3). Children from marginalized households are more likely to enter late and to drop out early, whether they live in low-income or middle-income countries, according to the Global Education Digest 2012 entitled Opportunities Lost: The Impact of Grade Repetition and Early School Leaving12. They tend to be from poor and rural households, and to have significantly lower primary education attendance rates. As for adult illiteracy, the world will miss the target of halving it between 1990 and 2015 (EFA Goal 4). Education from the perspective of people living in extreme poverty

In struggling against all odds to send their children to school, families living in extreme poverty have made their share of efforts to meet the ambitions set forth by States and the international community. “When you ask parents what they want for their children – even in war zones and disaster areas - they seek the same things first: education. Parents want their children in school.”13

We filled up our stomach with the courage of our parents to go school

I come from a family of four children. Our father and mother cannot see. I would not say that my dad's occupation was begging, but he did beg. Every morning, he would escort us. He went to his place on the bridge and we headed to our school. At noon, he came to the school, gave us something to eat for lunch and took off again. At school, I was valued by the teacher. When I came home having learned something new, I could not wait to tell my mom. It was she who taught me how to count (…). We often had nothing to eat, but nonetheless, we went to school. We filled up our stomach with the courage of our parents. It would have been impossible otherwise. Their efforts and their encouragement have helped me persevere in primary school and get my certificate. Thanks to a scholarship, I went to high school and learned sewing, and I have obtained a vocational qualification.

Fatimata K., Burkina Faso, at the seminar “The poorest, partners of an education genuinely for all”, Ouagadougou, 23 Feb- 1March, 2013. www.atd-quartmonde.org/Le-courage-de-mes-parents-m-a.html (video in French).

http://www.atd-quartmonde.org/Le-courage-de-mes-parents-m-a.html



Key issues and challenges highlighted by action-research programme

Overcoming barriers to equitable access to learning

Discrimination and stigmatization of disadvantaged students and their parents – They are blamed for their condition, and discriminated and humiliated by fellow students, other parents, teachers and school officials. A young girl from the Philippines said: “My classmates hid my pencils and laughed at me because I am not able to read.” A mother from Bolivia was told: “Your son will be the same as his drunken father! Why do you not find him a woman and marry him off?” A man from Burkina Faso recalled: “The teacher told me: 'Your mum cannot even afford a bag for you!' And the other pupils laughed and made fun of me. I was just a child; I felt so ashamed and was very angry. That’s where violence began.”

The hidden cost of “free education” - Education is meant to be free but uniforms, contributions for teaching materials, photocopies of files, and money for their children to buy a snack or pay for transportation represent a substantial amount of extra expenses for families in persistent poverty. A research participant in Haiti recounted: “When I was in school in the province, my mother couldn't find money to buy school materials. I was sent home every time I didn't have the required book; in the end, I left school without learning anything. When we arrived in Port-au-Prince, I was enrolled again, but I couldn't attend for the same reasons as before.” A father from Belgium observed that such a reality is common in industrialized countries as well: “Not being able to face these extra expenses makes children and parents ashamed, and sometimes the parents give false excuses because they can't pay for certain things.”

Lack of identity papers – Without birth certificates, children are not admitted to school or they are prevented from taking examinations. However, families living in extreme poverty face huge difficulties in obtaining administrative documents, such as birth certificates, residence permits and wedding licenses.

Fostering a learning environment based on partnership and cooperation

Participants in the action-research consistently stated that school should not exacerbate competition between students. Education should instill a sense of solidarity and cooperation aimed at developing the peace builders of tomorrow. In particular, seminar participants in Ouagadougou shared their vision of an Educational success that leaves no one behind “as a result of a continuous dialogue between the family, the community and the school.” Such an educational success “reflects fundamental values including human dignity, the sense of humility, mutual respect and solidarity, and being aware of one’s worth and usefulness to one’s family, the community and society as a whole.”

Improving learning outcomes and achieving equitable learning

Two key issues require special attention. First, the importance of early childhood care and pre-school as the foundation of children’s emotional, language and cognitive development that prepares them to enter school ready to learn. Secondly, the research participants expect education systems to equip children and youth with a balanced mix of academic knowledge, life skills and vocational competence that are helpful in the transition from school to work in a globalizing world. This vision concurs with the outcome of two regional consultations on education co-organized by UNESCO and UNICEF in Africa and



Asia-Pacific14 that called for a shift of focus from access to education to equitable learning, which goes beyond literacy and numeracy to “include cognitive and non-cognitive skills, psychosocial skills and critical thinking.”

6. ADDRESSING DISCRIMINATION AND FOSTERING PARTNERSHIP WITH PEOPLE LIVING IN POVERTY

Stigmatization As discussed in Chapter 1, the stigmatization of people living in extreme poverty increases the intensity and persistence of poverty. Stigmatization was a recurrent theme during the research project. Participants recounted how they were labeled as liars, unclean, feckless and lazy, often insulted by officials, and blamed for not accessing development programmes. One French participant noted that “we are obliged to go against the current if we want to get recognition and respect ... There are a lot of preconceived ideas and prejudices about people who have difficult lives.” Participants often suffered from cumulative stigma. For example, women belonging to the indigenous population in Bolivia faced abuse based on their poverty, their ethnicity and their gender. Medical staff routinely insult indigenous women, especially when they visit maternity wards: “They say to you 'You know how to open your legs for a man, now do the same to get the baby out.” The stigmatization of a particular population group is toxic to development. As the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to safe drinking water and sanitation has noted, it legitimizes both discrimination and the denial of a whole raft of other basic rights. Communities end up ashamed to use services and programmes aimed at them15. The MDGs fail to address this. Indeed, with a target to half and not eradicate extreme poverty, they have made it easier to stigmatize those 'left behind'. Discrimination Participants in the project were well aware that they were discriminated against because they lived in extreme poverty. One Brazilian participant observed that “only the poorest go through this... So don't tell me everyone is equal, because they're not.” As with cumulative stigma, they are often the victims of intersecting forms of discrimination. Living in poverty, they can do little to protect themselves, relying on the uncertain goodwill of the State, as a Mauritian participant confirmed: “The Government started to build a house for us... but the inhabitants came and destroyed this house because they didn't want “Creoles” in their neighborhood. Finally ...we obtained a piece of land elsewhere. There as well, the people demonstrated against the construction of our house, but we managed to get an official letter so we could live there.” As one Peruvian participant recounted, discrimination against people living in extreme poverty can lead to a terrible waste of human life: “In the hospitals... they don't treat you well... it's even worse if they see



you dressed as coming from the countryside. When my wife was pregnant and was about to give birth, I took her to the regional hospital and they didn't want to treat us saying there wasn't any space. I had to take her to another hospital ...but it was too late: the baby died that morning.” Discrimination against people living in extreme poverty both violates their basic human rights and pushes people further into poverty, seriously impacting on effective sustainable development. Once again, the MDGs do not directly address the discrimination faced by impoverished and socially excluded communities, despite the appalling human waste that it causes. Barriers to participation Chapters 1, 3 and 4 show some of the problems faced by development projects when they do not encourage the participation of people living in extreme poverty and social exclusion. Participants in this research project were convinced they had something to bring to development projects. However, as a Burkinabé participant noted, they were often labeled as ignorant due to social prejudice, and prevented from participating: “Those who say that old people are not intelligent, because they haven’t been to school, those people know nothing. No-one is born with the knowledge of how to write. I am just an elderly man here, we don’t look at bits of paper before we speak, but we speak with our own intelligence.” Other major barriers to participation were identified. Some were practical – potential participants were spread over a very wide area, or had other commitments, such as earning enough money to feed their family. Others pointed a lack of identity papers that prevented them from participating in the civic and political life of their country. One Madagascan participant explained how internalizing years of stigmatization and discrimination could be a barrier to participation: “Extreme poverty engenders a fear, a shame in people, doubts that stop them from expressing themselves when they should.” Short-term projects often failed to engage with communities suffering from this level of social exclusion. Equally problematic were programmes that penalized those who failed to participate, losing community support and making people's lives even harder. There are also key structural problems that need to be addressed. Currently, the World Bank and other large funding institutions suffer from internal cultures and development models that emphasize cost efficiency over participation and fast results over long-term programmes. They also show a tendency to favour large grants and loans over smaller, targeted funding models, directing resources away from the small local civil society organizations which have the expertise needed to implement genuine participation. Good practices Current development frameworks offer little indication about what makes for a genuinely participatory project. Fortunately, many of the participants in this research were able to draw on examples of good practice in participation that they had experienced.



Participants emphasized the necessity of taking time to get to know the community, win its trust and make sure that the project reaches its most excluded and impoverished members. One example from the Philippines shows the commitment this requires: “In order to start the livelihood project idea we had, we went to all of the community members in one place, house to house. Some wanted to take part so we started with them. Others saw it was nice and started to join. We went also to the ones who didn't want to join, in order to understand better their reasons, their life.” The individuals who ran the project not only took the time to talk to all those involved in it, but also to get to know those who did not want to take part directly. Participants also talked about the importance of developing projects with people living in extreme poverty, involving them at every stage of planning, implementation and evaluation. This requires acknowledging people as equal partners in decision making. As one Brazilian participant put it: “I tell you this: union is strength. There doesn't have to be anyone in charge, all together we can be in charge because we are fighting for the same goal. If you are fighting for the same goal, then what happens? You'll use your wisdom and the others will use theirs. Because your knowledge is your knowledge. One learns from the other, one helping the other.” Participants identified projects where different types of knowledge were valued as more likely to encourage cooperation and bring communities together. Political will is also vital if a genuinely participatory project is to be of any value. Participants from Belgium talked about three partnerships created between people living in extreme poverty, anti-poverty civil society organizations and the Belgian government. Legislative assemblies and institutions provided spaces for people living in extreme poverty to speak about the conditions they faced. This helped their communities to feel recognized within the country, and also improved legislation addressing poverty. Very importantly, those representing people living in extreme poverty during the process fed information back constantly to their communities, making sure that the issues that really mattered to them were being addressed and reinforcing trust in one and other.

7. CONCLUSION: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE POST-2015 AGENDA Drawing and building on the Guiding Principles on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, on the report of the High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Agenda and on the findings of our own work with people living in extreme poverty on different continents, we propose this tentative framework of recommendations, to be discussed with our partners: In a finite world, the current economic model, based on plundering the planet, is no longer sustainable. A different world is required, where each and every person can live in dignity and harmony with others and with the environment. Central to this is eradicating extreme poverty, which is a harsh violence inflicted on those who endure it, an unacceptable waste of human resources and a violation of human rights. The world we want must be human rights based, meaning that it must promote all rights for all, since human rights are universal, inalienable and indivisible. It must be concerned about the state of the planet. We should pursue goals that are based on our common humanity and – as no developed country



has succeeded in eradicating extreme poverty or addressing climate change – address developing and developed countries alike. Developed and developing countries must pool their efforts and knowledge in order to fight poverty and climate change together. In constantly changing societies, the eradication of extreme poverty must take place in conjunction with the fight against inequalities and the indispensable transition to a more ecological economy. It requires long-term action towards several objectives:

those living in extreme poverty must be permanently freed from it;

those who are on the brink of destitution must be helped to avoid falling any further;

everyone must be protected from extreme poverty16.

One of the MDGs' main shortcomings has been their focus on questionable global targets and indicators, and the complete absence of implementation guidelines and accountability mechanisms. Building on this experience, the post-2015 agenda must shift its focus from expected outcomes that seldom occur in time, to implementation processes and accountability mechanisms that are consistent with the goals and rapidly put in place. This is why the guidelines below indicate a goal and a process at the same time.

1. Leave no one behind

In the face of the growing disparities experienced in many countries since 2000 in spite of MDG 1, it is critical that governments continue to work towards eradicating extreme poverty and discrimination, so that everyone can enjoy their human rights. On the ground:

Eliminate stigmatization and discrimination based on gender, social origin or poverty and promote accountability in institutions and mindsets. To do this, project participants made a series of recommendations. Easily accessible information and advice services on people's human rights, and how to access them, should be put in place in each country, in the appropriate languages. Easily accessible, safe and transparent complaints procedures should be made available. Health, education and other professionals and state officials should receive awareness-raising training aimed at challenging taboos and stereotypes, improving their contacts with communities and giving them the means to understand people in their own language. C ivil society organizations should explicitly address stigma and discrimination as part of their work, in partnership with those experiencing it daily.

Reach out to the most impoverished population groups. This requires the political will and human investment to constantly reach out to those deepest in poverty. Administrations must strive to make their services accessible to them. Governments should work with businesses and civil society organizations to provide professional training and employment opportunities. All civil society organisations should assess to what extent they are open to people living in poverty and remove the barriers that hinder their inclusion.



Foster participatory development and service provision. To ensure that the most impoverished communities are reached, they need to feel ownership of projects and services. The underlying aims of projects must be clearly explained to all those who will be involved with them. Development workers and service providers should build long-term, equitable relationships with impoverished and isolated communities, and ensure they can genuinely participate in the planning, implementing and evaluation of projects and services.

At a national and international level:

To create an environment conducive to the eradication of extreme poverty and the implementation of human rights for all, it is indispensable to align development targets and their implementation with human rights norms and standards, in keeping with the UN Guiding Principles on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights. The rights of people living in poverty are too often downtrodden by requirements stemming from other laws to which governments give precedence, or by the influence of more powerful members of society. Greater policy coherence is needed at international level, within and between development, financial and trade organizations (IMF, World Bank, WTO, EU, etc.) by explicitly linking their policies and programmes to internationally agreed human rights principles and standards. Much work has to be done at intergovernmental and governmental level in matters relating to bilateral and multilateral trade, investment, taxation, finance, environmental protection and development cooperation. States and international institutions must look at ways of ensuring that policies and programmes are based on a respect for people living in extreme poverty, and not negative stereotypes.

Re-examining the indicators linked to extreme poverty. $1.25 a day should no longer be considered as a reliable global measure of extreme poverty, but simply as a measure of income, which must be proven relevant in the countries where it is used. More sophisticated measures based on the multidimensional aspects of poverty should be used and improved, like the Multidimensional Poverty Index set up by UNDP. The poorest 20% of the population in every country should be taken as a benchmark. For any given campaign, policy or action, the impact on the poorest twenty percent must be seen as a reference to evaluate their efficiency.

2. Introduce people living in poverty as a new partner in building knowledge on development.

Many people and institutions think that a “paradigm shift” is required to build a more human and sustainable world. We think it should take place first and foremost in the field of knowledge. Humanity's collective creativity and imagination have so far been deprived of the full contribution of people living in extreme poverty. If their intelligence is missing at the outset, a partnership will inevitably leave them behind. Any institution or policy that targets the general public will fail at reaching everyone unless it creates the conditions for people living in poverty to be a driving force in shaping its approach. Producing knowledge through a process of Merging of Knowledge17 is required to shape a good governance capable of pooling the courage, the intelligence and the commitments of all.



On the ground: Create cooperation and new forms of shared knowledge between people living in poverty and

mainstream society. This implies creating spaces where those living in poverty and in extreme poverty can freely develop their thinking over the long term, and merge their knowledge with other community stakeholders.

Join forces with academics, professionals and policy-makers to increase their involvement on a regular basis in processes of pooling knowledge with people living in poverty, and promote recognition of these processes within universities, institutions and CSOs.

Create reporting mechanisms in cooperation with impoverished communities. Data collection must no longer be a top-down exercise. People must be able to share their experiences of development policies and projects easily and in confidence.


Create cooperation and new forms of shared knowledge between developed and developing countries. Haiti is a compelling example of the human cost of the failure to cooperate and build together practical knowledge at national and international level.

Improve and expand qualitative and not only quantitative knowledge and measures, while working on notions such as development, discrimination, empowerment and participation with people living in poverty. Monitoring and evaluation must take advantage of new innovations in citizen reporting, rather than relying on flawed top-down statistics.

3. Promote decent jobs, social protection and meeting the essential needs of all.

In a world with limited natural resources and rapidly growing inequalities, a profound economic transformation is needed to eradicate extreme poverty and stop plundering natural resources, particularly in production and consumption models and in wealth distribution. On the ground:

Invest private and public funding to create decent jobs by meeting the essential needs which in fact are States’ obligations under human rights treaties. Providing legal identities, good quality education and healthcare services, social housing, drinking water and sanitation for all could help create millions of decent jobs. Likewise, the transition towards a green economy should be used to create decent jobs and make them accessible to people trapped in poverty. Support to small agricultural producers and workers in the informal economy, who make up the largest group of people living in poverty, would at the same time increase food security and stimulate economic development. The social and solidarity economy (social enterprises, cooperatives, women’s self-help groups, fair-trade networks, alternative finance systems, etc.) should be supported and expanded. Labour laws must be implemented and improved and labour protection inspectors multiplied. Street vendors must be given appropriate places for their trade, without being constantly chased by police. Appropriate procedures should be established in every country so that professional skills gained on-the-job can be officially recognized.




Implement ILO Recommendation n° 202, concerning national floors for social protection. This will ensure that all individuals, including the most vulnerable, receive a basic level of social protection, enabling them to better cope with unemployment, underemployment and shocks in formal and informal labour markets. Social protection floors must be adapted to each country and not jeopardize traditional means of mutual assistance and solidarity.

Build a new tax system – including innovative financial transaction taxes – that should be a motor for promoting social justice and environmental protection, and regulate global finance. This is very important to ensure the necessary funding to build social protection floors and meet the essential needs of all. Their design and implementation will still need to be discussed with people living in poverty and extreme poverty.

4. Achieve Education and Training for All based on cooperation between all stakeholders.

High quality, accessible education and training is essential in ensuring sustainable development. A future agenda must overcome barriers to equitable access to learning, and foster a learning environment that ensures that every child completes secondary education with the skills, including technical and vocational, needed for work and improve learning outcomes and achieve equitable learning. On the ground:

Remove hidden barriers to equity in education. Measures should be introduced to end the discrimination and stigmatization faced by impoverished students and their parents. Teacher and school staff training should incorporate awareness of the effects of extreme poverty so that they can provide the students with adequate support thanks to a better understanding of social exclusion. The indirect costs of education must be acknowledged as barriers that prevent very poor children from attending school, and grants and scholarships provided to allow their families to cover these costs.

Build cooperative forms of education in partnership with communities, recognizing that parents, regardless of their social status, are partners in children’s educational success. Emphasis should be placed on extending and complementing the education provided by parents, families and the community instead of belittling the values they impart to the children.

Ensure high quality education with improved results for people in poverty. Local education programmes should put resources into reaching children whose families live in extreme poverty and social exclusion early in life. Education professionals must ensure that learners develop their fullest potential, emphasising not just enrolment and attendance figures but quality education designed to equip them with academic knowledge as well as creative thinking and interpersonal and communication skills. This in turn requires investment in decent training for education professionals. Informal pathways to education and training should be recognised and supported by local educational institutions and programmes.

At national and international level:

Focus on policy coherence and accountability to ensure access for all. Good governance measures and concerted action beyond the education sector should be implemented to address



the wide range of issues that influence progress in education, including identity documents, health service provision, migrations, urban planning and housing, livelihood and employment. Accountability and arbitration mechanisms should be created to deal with cases of stigmatization and discrimination.

Reflect community needs in education policies. School curricula should be designed to provide children with knowledge and skills that will help them improve their living conditions and those of their families and the community, taking into account cultural contexts and rural/urban realities.

Improve quality, equitability and learning outcomes. Goals measuring education should not only focus on quantitative data. “Quality Education for All” should be ensured by creating tools to measure the qualitative experiences and outcomes of education programmes for people living in poverty. National education policies should increase the human and financial resources invested in Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programmes with the aim of reaching the most excluded and impoverished communities. National education organisations and international institutions should recognize alternative pathways to quality education as a legitimate source of learning, and train educators for this purpose through adequate policies, programmes and financing mechanisms.

5. Promote participatory good governance.

Ensuring the genuine participation of people living in extreme poverty and social exclusion in all forms of governance, from international institutions to groups responsible for overseeing local development projects, is extremely important. Families and individuals living in extreme poverty do not want to be the beneficiaries of projects, programmes, or specific anti-poverty measures. Rather, they aspire to play an active role in a model of globalization that is based on human dignity and that is not dictated by a race for profits but designed to promote a fair distribution of the earth’s resources and the sharing of human knowledge in its totality. On the ground:

Ensure that participation in governance is more than a consultation exercise. People in extreme poverty must be involved in the decision-making processes for planning, implementing and evaluating the programmes and projects that affect them. Information on all aims of a project must be available to people, and clear feedback on the results of their participation is vital. Experienced individuals must be employed by project directors to implement participation on the ground, by building links and trust with people living in poverty, and conveying their expectations to project leaders and funders.

Ensure that communities take part willingly. Participation cannot be imposed on people. Time must be taken to listen to the community - not just to community 'leaders' – and allow its members to prepare for meetings and choose their own spokespersons. Participation should be encouraged though community solidarity and collaboration, never by imposing humiliating conditions on people or penalizing non-compliance.

Help communities to form their own support organisations and build links with the wider society. Participatory programmes should seek to empower communities, encouraging them to



self-organise and protect their fundamental rights. From this base they can reach out to engage with wider society and support their representatives in participatory governance processes.

Recognise the important role civil society organisations can play in building participatory governance. CSOs purporting to speak for the most impoverished groups must ensure that people in extreme poverty have a genuine role in decision-making, implementation and evaluation, and be recognised as the ultimate guarantors of any participatory project. CSOs in which impoverished communities have chosen freely to participate, and that provide space for people living in poverty to speak with their own voices and take part in decision-making processes, should be recognised by local authorities as stakeholders in governance processes.


Ensure that national and international structures encourage participatory governance. The incentives for staff in international and national development institutions should be modified, in order to render their processes more conducive to implementing participatory approaches. It should be recognized that genuinely participatory civil society organisations, with which people living in extreme poverty choose to associate, have a legitimate role as stakeholders. As such, they should be able to comment on and contribute to discussions on governance.

Develop participatory mechanisms at all levels, in line with the provisions set out in the Guiding Principles on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights: “States must ensure the active, free, informed and meaningful participation of persons living in poverty at all stages of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of decisions and policies affecting them …Particular care should be taken to fully include the poorest and most socially excluded persons.” This effort should include developing a spirit of solidarity between people living in extreme poverty and society at large, through public awareness campaigns, school programmes and creating spaces for exchange.

Ensure transparency at all levels of governance, so that the reason decisions are taken and the effects of participation are clear for all to see, whilst creating accountability mechanisms at national and international levels. Independent ombudsmen, judicial processes and peer-review systems between countries can all help ensure that participatory governance is not just tokenistic.



1 See Brand, A., and Monje Barón, B. (2012). Extreme Poverty is Violence, Breaking the Silence, Searching for

Peace. Vauréal, France: International Movement ATD Fourth World. 2 Robert Walker, Grace Bantebya Kyomuhendo, Elaine Chase, Sohail Choudhry, Erika K. Gubrium, Jo Yongmie

Nicola, Ivar Lødemel, Leemamol Mathew, Amon Mwiine, Sony Pellissery and Yan Ming, 'Poverty in Global

Perspective: Is Shame a Common Denominator?', Journal of Social Policy, Available on CJO

doi:10.1017/S0047279412000979 3 See http://www.atd-fourthworld.org/Guidelines-for-the-Merging-of.html

4 Ingo Ritz, GCAP coordinator, participant at the seminar “Towards a sustainable development that leaves no one

behind” organized by ATD Fourth World, Brussels, Belgium, 22 January 2013. 5 In Executive Summary of Report of the HLP on the Post-2015 Development Agenda.

6 Statement by 17 Special Procedures mandate-holders of the Human Rights Council, Geneva, 21 May 2013.

7 Former Belgian Minister of Finance, former President of the European Investment Bank (EIB) from 2000-2011.

(Contribution in French, translated into English by ATD Fourth World). 8 Statement of the IMF to the International Monetary and Financial Committee and Development Committee,

Washington D.C., 20 April 2013. 9 Adopted by the Human Rights Council on 27 September 2012, and noted with appreciation by the UN General

Assembly on 20 December 2012. http://daccess-dds-

ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G12/154/60/PDF/G1215460.pdf?OpenElement 10

UN, The MDG Report 2012, p. 10 11

See http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/leading-the-international -agenda/efareport/reports/2012-

skills/ 12

See http://www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Documents/ged-2012-en.pdf 13

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in Global Education First Initiative, underscoring the importance of

education in the achievement of the MDGs. GEFI brochure p.2, http://www.globaleducationfirst.org 14

Consultations on Education in Addis-Ababa, Ethiopia, 28 February, and Bangkok, Thailand, 28 Feb.-1 March

2013. 15

Report of the Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation,Catarina de

Albuquerque, A/HRC/21/42, 2 July 2012 15

Joseph Wresinski, Chronic Poverty and Lack of Basic Security: The Wresinski Report of the Economic and Social

Council of France, Paris: Fourth World Publications, 1994, p. 6 16

See part 2 in this document

http://www.atd-fourthworld.org/Guidelines-for-the-Merging-of.html

http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G12/154/60/PDF/G1215460.pdf?OpenElement

http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G12/154/60/PDF/G1215460.pdf?OpenElement

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/leading-the-international%20-agenda/efareport/reports/2012-skills/

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/leading-the-international%20-agenda/efareport/reports/2012-skills/

http://www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Documents/ged-2012-en.pdf

http://www.globaleducationfirst.org/



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